A log of my experiences

Locked Up!

Breaking News! One cherry tomato plant and two beefsteak tomatoes were just given sentences of 40 days to life. On the scene reporters claim that their vines were making them too hard for Kabir to handle and they needed to be restrained. All jokes aside, today I brought home some tomato cages for the three tomato plants I am currently growing. Cherry tomato plants tend to spread out very far and have long and twisted stems. They look heavily disorganized and grow very fast, while beefsteaks appear much more uniform and don’t grow out as quickly. After trying out a few different ways to provide supports to vine plants, including using bamboo stakes, rope netting, and a creeper mesh, I finally decided to stick to cages, as they keep the plant growing upward and prevent it from getting tangled up with other plants in the same bed. Unfortunately, the cherry tomato has gotten quite big at this point, so getting it into the cage was quite a challenge. A big part of the stem actually snapped off while trying to force the plant into the cage (In the picture to the left, if you look in the upper-right hand corner, you can see my father holding the part that broke off). I put the severed stem into an empty spot in another planting bed, so hopefully it can continue to grow, but the chances are slim. The beefsteaks were much less trouble and fit very nicely into their cages. In the past, I’ve usually either allowed the tomatoes to grow up a creeper mesh, which ends up tearing as the big tomatoes usually weigh it down, or just on the ground, where they are easily accessible by garden pests, namely snails. Im hoping this works out. And yes, I did plant the basil and will be providing an update tomorrow.